Rabinism Collection

This is an assorted collection of quotations
due to Professor Michael Rabin, produced at Harvard University during the Fall
1997 incarnation of the course Computer Science 226r: Efficient Algorithms and
the Fall 1998 incarnation of the course Computer Science 224r: Randomized
Algorithms, and at the Spring 2002 Cryptography course at Columbia Univeristy.
Originally published by Ken Shan, with
thanks to Stuart Schechter, Michael Epstein, Daniel Medina, and Chris Small.

This is a graph... no, this is just chalk on a chalkboard, but it represents a graph.(Fall 1993, on algorithms)

This is trivial, but not obvious. (Rabin in 224r, Fall 1996)

Maybe if one of you falls off the high path and goes to law school... (1997-09-16)

(introducing probability theory) I apologize to those people who know everything, but... (1997-09-27)

It's a trivial proof, even if some of you think that you're lost.(1997-09-29)

So that's f of u. (1997-09-23)

... b_1 ... b_12. That's not a vitamin; it's the name I give to this coefficient, so don't eat it. (1997-09-23)

And now if I have an enormous p... (1997-10-14)

... and n is correct so I'm always correct. (1997-10-16)

There are many methods -- none of them as good as the randomized primality test. (1997-10-16)

That was studied by [Rabin stumbles over some name hard to pronounce and even harder to transcribe]... somebody and myself. (1997-10-16)

The probability of an error is smaller than the probability that none of us is awake and we are all dreaming this. (1997-10-16)

One plus one equals zero. We have to get used to this fact of life. (1997-10-30)

[paraphrase] Quantum mechanics is very difficult to understand, but once you understand it, it's really quite simple. (1997-11-04)

Don't write this in your notebook -- write it somewhere else because this is all complete and perfect. (1997-11-13)

I'm sure that when people were reading the hieroglyphs, they had whole theories that resulted from reading a tilde like that as a squared. (1997-12-04)

One of those moments in math which leave us mere mortals with our mouths open in astonishment. (Fall 1997, on what he was about to do)

These are not disposable diapers. (Fall 1997, on algorithms)

You'll recall from last time -- Even if you don't recall, you have no choice. I'll tell you. (1998-01-08)

Teaching this course for an entire term and I still don't understand how to move around these blackboards. (1998-01-08)

The reason I use stars [rather than numbers for equations] is that I used numbers in the last lecture and now we're getting to really essential things. (1998-01-08)

A weight is always going to be positive, even in extreme cases of anorexia. (1998-09-22)

Wow. Some people really lead an interesting life. (1998-09-24, uncovering a beautiful geometric drawing from a previous class)

You should be in a situation where you can just be woken in the middle of the night and be asked about finite fields and be able to recite everything out of your head. That's real knowledge. (1998-10-22)

Consequently, without a proof, I mean just proof by example, that holds true. (1998-11-10)